Don't tell me to buy a ding-dong or do it like you do: my circumstamce are completely different to your 1st-world conditions.
Let's think from 1st-principles, and from what's proven. My portable rPi is in a shoe-box with a 6v Acco, so that I can carry it to a location, which has no electic-supply, and lie down and listen to important Text-To-Speech material from the inet. It works well.
Using the same principle, I want to be able to visit a standard Micro$lth-based office, with the portable rPi, programmed so that when I replace-with-rPi's-eth0-cable, the [one] WinPC's eth0-connection to the LAN and printer, and switch rPi on, it will cause the printer to print my file/S from the USBstik.
Just like presently I can USBstik-load and sequence the sound-files to be played by rPi.
What is needed?
= the IP of the printer/s? How do I find that? I don't want to upset the office-girl, who usually/previously prints from my USBstik.
How would I do a test run at my mate's win-PC-LAN-printer set-up?
I don't know whether this would suit you, but if you install SAMBA on your RPi you can configure it so that files in selected directories are visible to the PC. You could then access and print files from the RPi using Windows Files Explorer.
How would you intend to connect to their network? A spare Ethernet port so that their network would give you an IP address? Wireless? Or to unplug the office girl's PC and connect directly to it?
On Sat, 21 Mar 2015 09:11:19 +0000, The Natural Philosopher declaimed the following:
Giving benefit of doubt -- I interpreted that to mean the OP had likely downloaded various files to the device while in a place with connectivity, and then took it to the beach with a set of headphones.
It does sound like the OP intends to unplug the office computer's network access and plug his device into its place. If he's lucky, the office just has a cheap DHCP capable router and not something tied to specific MAC addresses (for security).
Doesn't want to "upset the office girl" -- but wants to disconnect the office computer from the net so the Pi can be connected in its place? That's not supposed to cause interference?
As for printer IP -- the printers (I have two) run different protocols which the computer end drivers have to understand so they can discover the printers and install the proper configuration. The print software I bought for my Nook HD has to download a driver whenever a new printer is discovered on the WiFi linkage (I didn't configure the printers for WiFi, they are cabled to an 8-port switch that then connects with my WiFi router [and it connects to the DSL "modem" -- since both the DSL and router are DHCP servers I had to configure them on separate sub-LANS to avoid routing confusion).
Good luck finding a Pi-compatible network printer driver -- for the specific model of printer at that office.
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Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
DT> > to the LAN and printer, and switch rPi on, it will DT> > cause the printer to print my file/S from the USBstik. DT> > = the IP of the printer/s? How do I find that? I don't want to DT> > upset the office-girl, who usually/previously prints from my USBstik. DT> I don't know whether this would suit you, but if you install SAMBA on DT> your RPi you can configure it so that files in selected directories are DT> visible to the PC. You could then access and print files from the RPi DT> using Windows Files Explorer. DT> DT> How would you intend to connect to their network? A spare Ethernet port DT> so that their network would give you an IP address? Wireless? Or to DT> unplug the office girl's PC and connect directly to i I'm kinda assuming that the printer is connected wirelessly (or hard-wired via 100Base-T eithernet connection) to the router, if so a quick view of the DHCP client list in the router's web page will tell you what the ip address is. Use that ip address to connect via generic tcp/ip or jet-direct should do the trick. A test page print will confirm weather it works or not. If the printer is connected to a windows PC, you'll need samba and the printer will need to be setup for sharing on that pc, and of course, you'll need the user account name and password to access the printer. (or add your user name and password to the list of authentic users of the printer).
Gees!! I'm used to the printer just being connected to the ParPort! I don't want to KNOW about SAMBA. If I can ssh between my linux:PC and linux:rPi by just knowing each one's allocated IP, can't I send to the printer by just replacing [temporarily] it's eth0 plug with the rPi's eth0 cable; provided the rPi knows the printer's IP.
Can't I get the printer's IP by plugging the rPi's eth0 cable into the office-girl's input from her PC, with some linux utility on the rPi which will GET the printer's IP ?
Surely the printer is not limited to Windows or samba ?
On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 09:28:46 +0000 (UTC), Unknown declaimed the following:
That assumes the printer has a hard-coded IP set up. A networked printer may be a DHCP client that gets its by asking the network (at large) to send it an IP.
Here's the current list from my router; if I power everything down and bring it back up one at a time, there is no assurance that the same IPs will be assigned to all that stuff.
Client Name Interface IPv4 Address MAC Address Expires Time LAN 192.168.2.100 28:C6:8E:FB:9D:7B 22:36:52 Nintendo Wii U Wireless 192.168.2.103 9C:E6:35:75:D5:2A 23:40:31 BLACKBERRY-1E6A Wireless 192.168.2.104 70:AA:B2:9A:F1:7F 22:01:26 Imperium LAN 192.168.2.106 B8:CA:3A:79:0C:36 22:00:22 Wireless 192.168.2.107 64:C6:67:00:BA:26 22:21:15 EPSONF4EF32 LAN 192.168.2.108 00:26:AB:F4:EF:32 23:39:42 HP507DC0 LAN 192.168.2.111 9C:B6:54:50:7D:C0 21:59:40 nook-1e7bd821-fb Wireless 192.168.2.112 58:67:1A:AC:E1:56 21:15:24 Wireless 192.168.2.113 5C:A3:9D:08:4A:B9 09:59:53
formatting link
And that does not include the matter of drivers. Finding printers that understand plain ASCII (much less ISO-Latin-1) is much harder these days.
Epson and HP both have their printer languages (I don't know the current Epson form, but HP-PCL has been around for decades). Above that, you might have a printer that has a PostScript RIP installed. On the computer side, you might have drivers that just create a bitmap image of the page in memory and then just send graphics commands to control every dot of ink on the page (this is what the first "WinPrinters" did -- they had no printer rendering software in the printer itself, and relied on computer driver to layout everything and then stream pixel data).
Linux tends to rely on GhostScript to either generate PostScript from applications, or to render PostScript into printer specific commands.
So that's "five" data formats already: ASCII text Epson RIP HP-PCL RIP Postscript RIP "WinPrinter" type bitmaps
Then there is the matter of sending that data to the printer... UDP, TCP, do you send a network path to the printer and it then reads a file from some network storage location. Handling collisions if multiple clients want to print to it at the same time.
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Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
Unfortunately it's not likely to be as simple and direct as one would like. There are a plethora of possible configurations. Provide a diagram of this office network including at least the office girl's pc, the printer, network switch(es), and whether the pc and/or printer are DHCP configured or static IP. Brand and model of printer would also help.
AFAIK Eposn still produces printers that understand its Esc/P protocol alongside the GDDI ones (those re the so-called 'Winprinter' bitmapped devices. Esc/P is like HP's PCL: the original control language dates beck to the late 70s and the Epson MX80 (a 9-pin dot-matrix printer).
I still have some programs written in Sculptor 4GL which have their own print drivers. The Epson drivers I set up in the early 80s for the Epson MX-80 still work perfectly with the LQ series (24-pin dot-matrix) and Stylus 850 (ink-jet) Epsons. I haven't used a more recent Epson, but I'd put money on any Epson that isn't GDDI to work with these programs because every Epson Esc/P implementation has been a true superset of the original MX-80 version.
Same goes for HP - the same programs also have a driver I originally set up for a Laserjet 2 and this 'just works' with my current LJ5.
from
I think you'll find that Linux uses a close derivative of the Common UNIX CUPS Printing System (CUPS), which can certainly handle most proprietary printer languages, i.e. Esc/P, HP PCL, etc, as well as PostScript. I have a feeling that it can also HP plotters as well, but its been a while...
I'm not clear what conventions exist between the originating program and CUPS, but CUPS can send data to any configured printer by translating the print job to the appropriate encoding/print control language. The translated print job can then be sent to printers with serial, parallel or TCP/IP interfaces or to printers attached to remote CUPS servers.
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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
It will be tested on my mate's M$Win & LAN & printer. So that I can visit the office, with the portable headerless rPi, before the office-girl arrives to use here WinTelPC.
On 21/03/15 17:03, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:-
EXACTLY !
Perhaps if I phone a Win-user, he can tell me if/where his system shows the printer's IP, and how to ask the office-girl to 'get it' - from her PC.
The following initial google seem optimistic for 1 or both of the printers:--
Operating System (OS). STEP 1: Select OS Family. Windows; Mac support.brother.com/g/b/downloadtop.aspx?c...mfc9120cn... - 15k - [19]Cached - [20]Similar pages
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SSL ... support.brother.com/g/b/producttop.aspx?c=au...mfc9120cn... - 12k - [22]Cached - [23]Similar pages The other printer is the very common: NP lazer jet 3055
X wrote:- ]Actually if Pis run CUPS that should not be a problem - the config files ]are text. and then there's:-- Subject: Re: Printing from. Newsgroups: comp.sys.raspberry-pi Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 15:47:22 -0500 From: T M Smith
This seems similar; but I'll use an eth0 cable.
Surely there are utilities to plug the rPi's eth0-cable into the LAN and get the printer/s IP?
And don't these printers have a simple mode, where they accept an ASCII string, like the old printers did?
On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 03:13:20 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com declaimed the following:
Well, as I showed -- for me it's in the router's DHCP allocation table. But that requires knowing the IP of the router along with its login/password.
Beyond that there are a number of protocols -- the printer may broadcast its status for clients to pick up (need the appropriate software running on the expected port to receive the broadcast), SNMP may be able to ask what is out there... etc.
MFC would seem to indicate a multi-function unit (printer/scanner/fax)... That makes it even less likely to have a pure ASCII mode (and if it did, it probably requires direct serial/parallel connection, as anything coming over Ethernet needs to be packetized with enough information so that the printer can tell which job a packet belongs to -- wouldn't want to mix data from two systems sending print jobs to the one printer).
Getting much rarer, and likely only via serial connection (where the device knows there is only one machine sending data)
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Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
Most large office printers today are fairly complex, contain a hard drive, take ages to boot and many run Linux... typically, the printer driver installation software will scan the network for one or more of its target printers.
The last one I was involved with was a Ricoh device, that used TCP/9100 for 'raw' data, whatever that was. But it could be configured for several ports and protocols, including lpr and IPX.
With any luck you attempt to gain unauthorised access to a computer network will be detected & you will be thrown into gaol where you cannot bother this group further
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"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
specific."
-- Jane Wagner
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